Who Granted the GMO Evangelists the Monopoly on Compassion?

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter from CounterPunch. 

Todhunter has been communicating and arguing with some of the loudest defenders of corporate-GMO industrial scale farming methods. He has discovered that they, instead of looking at sound evidence and using rational arguments, resort to scurrilous attacks and/or wrap themselves in "humanitarian" righteousness. If the latter sounds familiar to you, it is because it has been a frequent excuse used by US Empire directors to justify their numerous invasions, subversions, false-flag operations, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Whenever a governing elite, or sociopathic individual, pursues its/his own interests at the expense or harm to others, such people resort to the shrillest attacks on anyone impeding their efforts and/or attempt to wrap themselves in righteousness. Capitalists do this, and have always done this, throughout their 400 year history simply because the operation of their system is designed to serve their selfish interests at the expense of the vast majority of humans.  

In contrast to these sociopathic defenders, Todhunter fills his articles with links to solid evidence and uses rational arguments to attack a system of farming that is displacing people from their land, causing widespread poverty and inequality, and ruining the health of people who consume the food produced by this form of industrialized farming.

Ten lies we're told to justify the slaughter of 20 million in the First World War

Click here to access article by Dominic Alexander from CounterFire [Britain].

This is in remembrance of Veterans Day which was formerly Armistice Day commemorating the end of WWI. It is still Remembrance Day to the Brits, Canadians, etc.

Dominic Alexander debunks ten myths used by politicians and historians to rebrand World War 1 in the centenary of its outbreak.

Graph of the day illustrates countries should sacrifice ‘growth’ during COP21, the Paris climate summit

Click here to access article by Rolf Schuttenhelm from bits of science.

It illustrates one clear message to world leaders just before the Paris climate summit: The effective global climate policy that we need – cannot come without ‘economic sacrifice’. To breach the emissions trend – we need to reconsider the importance of growth to our collective well-being. And you, world leaders, have just three weeks left to think about that – think hard, and make the right decisions.

Emissions need to go DOWN – globally, immediately.

The problem is that capitalism must have growth. So class, what's the solution?

Syria: why the West meddling into a 3000 years old realm has failed

Click here to access article by Judith Bello from blog The Destructed Globe. (Note: This post consists of her introduction about, and her experience with, the panel of which she was a member. It is well worth reading. Her presentation as a panel member follows the introduction.)

This is an excellent illustration of an ordinary, although well educated, person who is working now on behalf of truth and peace in the Middle East, and is blogging and speaking about this experience. This article is a transcript of a presentation she recently delivered at a New York state college where she was invited on a panel to express her views about current Syrian matters along with two professors from that school. She has been a frequent traveler to Iran and is a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Code Pink.

Note how her presentation differed from the two professors who have been subject to  indoctrination and discipline throughout their academic careers.

Intimacy Against Alienation

Click here to access a 55 minute interview with Mitch Mansour provided by KPFA, a listener sponsored radio station in Berkeley, California. Mansour is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the U. of Oregon. His doctoral dissertation focused on this topic.

Is a romantic partner a replacement for the community that people used to rely on to meet their material and emotional needs? Mitch Monsour thinks so; he points to the competitive and individualistic nature of our society, the way economic rationality gets enacted in the romantic arena, and the structural obstacles to real intimacy.

Human beings are quintessentially social animals, and historically humans have received physical and emotional supports from a wide variety of sources within a community. Mansour argues, and provides evidence for, a phenomenon seen in US society of increasing isolation, both physical and psychological, with the result that romantic love is seen as the solution to isolation. This imposes an impossible burden on one's partner to provide the social supports that characterized earlier social relations. 

Capitalist influences has also shaped this relationship by encouraging consumption by these partnerships and individualistic competition in general. The commodification of everything under capitalism interferes with supportive values even within the partnership. This influences how people enter the partnership "marketplace" with pronounced focus on how much a prospective partner person can provide a person in terms of wealth and status. People tend to be interested in what they can get out of a relationship which interferes with real intimacy. Thus, most relationships fail.

MSM and the Bear

Click here to access article by Michael Jabara Carley from Strategic Culture Foundation.

Mostly with cartoons from mainstream media, Carley illustrates the Empire's use of their powerful propaganda organs to disseminate themes that serve their interests of global domination. President Putin of Russia, like anyone that pursues an independent course of action, has long since become a target for Empire attacks and ridicule. 

Because Empire media has enjoyed so many years of success in distorting reality for ordinary Americans by hiding ruling class war crimes behind "humanitarian" causes, by supporting whatever stories emanating from government officials, whether named or not, they continue to do what they do best--the manufacturing of consent to Empire policies and actions. 

American fascists (if you are not sure what fascism is, see my commentaries here, here, here, and here) have long recognized the value of managing the minds of ordinary Americans instead of resorting to the brutal use of force of classic fascism. This orientation probably dates from WWI when American ruling class directors saw the necessity of preparing ordinary Americans to enter the European war because they feared that their allies, Britain and France, to whom they had lent so much money, might very well lose the war. They launched a massive propaganda campaign that used the grossest forms of negative propaganda portraying Germans as sadistic animals on the prowl to devour all good people. The success of this propaganda to turn American minds around from being against participation into support for US entry into the war was beyond their wildest dreams. This lesson has stayed with them ever since.

In the 1930s when all capitalist ruling classes were split down the middle on the issue of supporting German fascism, American fascists used a cover of isolationism to impede all efforts to come to the aid of all nations trying to defend themselves from fascist invasions. (There were genuine anti-war people (among opinion leaders), but the serious ones made up no more than 10% of isolationists.) The ruling capitalist class once again used their mainstream media to turn people, but this time it was against war or any effort to prevent Nazis from having their way. They used the media to portray the spread of fascism across Europe as only a problem for Europe, and later Asia. Many ordinary Americans swallowed their lies whole.

The first fascist victum was Spain that had elected a left-wing republican government in 1931. All major liberal capitalist nations remained neutral while German and Italian fascist regimes starting in 1936 tore the country to pieces and installed the fascist Franco regime. Because of the split in the European capitalist countries, Nazi Germany easily overran one country after another. Only when when the Nazis posed a threat to the British Empire did American fascists (aka "isolationists") give their grudging support for US aid to Britain. But it took the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a military base in Hawaii, to bring the US into the war against fascism.

While recently reading the letters of FDR, I learned of the strong opposition in American mainstream media to aiding any of the Allies of WWII. FDR remarked on this frequently. He saw from 85-90% of mainstream media fitting into this virulent "isolationist" opposition. In addition this extremely popular president was opposed by the same crowd on nearly all of his New Deal programs which provided some relief to poverty stricken ordinary Americans during the Great Depression. He was so stymied from getting his views out that he had to resort to using radio, known as Fireside Chats, to communicate directly to Americans.

The US capitalist class's use of media, education, and entertainment to shape consent to their policies and actions is grossly misunderstood and underestimated. I believe that it is absolutely imperative that a dedicated effort must be made to establish alternative media as a major part of a strategy to take power away from this class and establish a true rule of, by, and for the people.

Former Japanese Ambassador calls on IOC to cancel 2020 Olympics over Fukushima Risks

Click here to access article from nsnbc. 

The former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland, Mitshei Murata, has called on the President of the International Olympic Committee to move the 2020 Olympics from Tokyo or to cancel the games over the situation at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. 

Saudi Arabia is at a Dangerous Crossroads

Click here to access article by Viktor Mikhin from New Eastern Outlook.

I don't normally run articles in which speculate too much about world politics--the online world is full of them. However I am running this article because it is not only posted on a reputable website (although with an emphasis on issues important to Russia), but because I have read numerous other reports that support the facts presented in the article. Regardless of what we think of this medieval kingdom, it does play a very important role in major conflicts and geopolitical issues. Thus, it is important that we stay informed as much as we can about the kingdom's politics.

...many members of the Saudi Royal Family are concerned about the situation which has come about after the new King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud came to power. According to the Egyptian newspaper, the Egyptian Gazette, the changes that have occurred in the Kingdom’s foreign and domestic policy in less than 9 months of King Salman’s reign have cause a growing number of problems in both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and abroad. Dissatisfaction among the Saudis has risen to a new level.

All of this is reflected in a letter that members of the Royal Family received from one of the younger princes. [my link]

See also this article by Pepe Escobar entitled "What’s the Big Deal Between Russia and the Saudis?".

The Indonesian Massacre: What Did the US Know?

Click here to access article by Margaret Scott from The New York Review of Books.

This is a second posting of the 50 year anniversary of the Indonesian Massacre that was engineered in large part by the CIA. (See my first post which includes more linked resources here.) It is one of history's most notorious crimes against humanity. Thus, no one who knows about it want to talk about it simply because they are related to the perpetrators of this crime. However, many people especially in Indonesia, less so here in the US, want to know about it, and are asking questions. Even the CIA was pressured to release their classified documents, which of course were heavily redacted.

Since the late 1990s, however, there have been growing efforts to recover that history. In 1998, Indonesians rose up against Suharto, whose military dictatorship had lasted thirty-two years. This movement, known as reformasi, and Suharto’s fall, brought new scrutiny to the events of 1965. Many Indonesians rebelled against the taboo of talking about the mass killings, which they began investigating through journalism, books, and films. In recent years, local organizations have also sought to locate the mass graves and assist the survivors. These efforts have been aided by US records. In 2001, despite the efforts of the CIA to prevent it, the US released Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, a State Department volume that included long-secret government documents from that period. It describes how US officials pushed for the annihilation of the PKI, providing covert assistance and urging the Indonesian army to complete the job.

Being published in a liberal source, Scott sticks to the Empire policy of describing Empire targets, even when they are extremely popular as was Sukarno, in unflattering terms:

At the time, Indonesia was led by the leftist, romantic revolutionary-turned-autocrat Sukarno, and also had the third largest Communist Party in the world, the PKI, with some 3 million members.

Federal Budget plans billions for war, cuts to services

Click here to access article by Peter Gilbert from Workers World. 

Although this article was posted on November 5, it apparently written before October 29. To bring you up-to-date, the law was passed by Congress and signed into law since then. Otherwise this article provides a summary of the main features of the budget that just passed and signed into law. 

The basic deal increases the federal budget by $80 billion for the next two years, $50 billion in the first year and $30 billion in the second year. About half of the increase is earmarked only for the Pentagon, the remainder for unspecified “discretionary spending.” Those increases come at the cost of massive cuts to Medicare and Social Security payments to workers with disabilities (SSDI). The deal also includes additional funding of $32 billion dollars in the “Overseas Contingency Operations Fund” (OCO), to fund the ongoing U.S. imperialist aggression against Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The little understood dymanic of capitalism

by cartoonist Dan Wasserman.

Military spectacle and American sport

Click here to access article by Eric London from World Socialist Web Site.

The report, titled “Tackling Paid Patriotism,” shows that the Pentagon paid sports teams across the country millions of dollars for allowing the military-intelligence agencies to carry out hundreds of displays of pro-war, pro-military propaganda.

Defending Socialism: Foner and Sanders v. Eugene Debs

Click here to access article by Paul Street from CounterPunch.

Although I found it a bit of a challenge to wade through Street's awkward writing, he does manage to excoriate a left "socialist" politician and one of many academic "leftists" who, in order to please their ruling class masters and thus advance their careers, are attempting to redefine socialism and use it as bait to lure back--since it's election time once again--the politically alienated and disaffected populace into the capitalist funded and organized Democratic Party .

Environmental crises and liberal solutions

by cartoonist Stephanie McMillan.

The myth of US democracy

Click here to access article by Asad Zaman from The Express Tribune.

This is another expression of middle class opposition to the declining prospects of this shrinking class as capitalist ownership over more sophisticated technologies reduce their need for middle class managers, highly skilled technicians, and assorted other professionals. A few members of this class are now expressing their outrage about this trend as an attack on democracy which they always posit as existing previously when substantial numbers of their class were required by capitalists. 

Members of this class have also played a critical role in indoctrinating workers from the cradle to the grave that the latter were living in a democratic system, a system best expressed in the Declaration of Independence as "government of the people, by the people, and for the people". This extravagant promise was delivered to early European farmers and workers on the North American continent when the rising capitalist class here wanted to have the "freedom" to acquire riches and power like their European counterparts instead of assuming a more subordinate role of colonialists who supplied European countries with raw materials. Of course, no such "democratic" government ever existed before or since the American Revolution in the US or any other government since the rise of civilization. 

Still it is the dream of the billions of ordinary people across the globe, and this is precisely why our middle class indoctrinators keep referencing this dream whenever they want to disguise the reality of class rule. But how the times have changed! The prospects of this middle class who have been loyally serving the One Percent are now clearly diminishing.

So, read the article because these middle class ideologists do correctly point out the growing concentration of wealth and power. But just keep in mind that when they talk about "democracy", they do so from a very self-serving perspective on history.

US in Syria: Stopping the "Arsonist-Firefighter"

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook.

Once again Cartalucci uses major Empire sources to unravel the many conspiracies our masters are hatching to provide for themselves more power and wealth throughout the world. In this piece the author focuses on the latest region that our hegemons are targeting to destabilize and absorb into their plans--Syria. 

The problem for Empire hegemons is that major powers are standing in their way: Russia and Iran directly, China indirectly. This area could very well become a pivotal contest between these nations, and the Empire directors know this very well. Thus they will employ all of their strategies and tactics to defeat the inference of their plans for Syria coming from Russia, Iran, and China. Cartalucci in this article cites these strategies and tactics which he has obtained directly from Empire sources.

...Washington Post... reveal[s] the true intentions of the US and its "boots on the ground" in Syria. While they claim they seek to "fight ISIS," the truth is far more sinister. Under the pretext of fighting ISIS, these US forces, backing militants armed, trained, and funded by the US and its regional allies, will take and hold territory, effectively fulfilling US policy papers that have long-expressed the desire to "deconstruct" Syria as a secondary means of destroying it as a functioning nation-state if direct regime change was unachievable.

The Washington Post states specifically:

Defeating the Islamic State in Syria, under Obama’s strategy, rests on enabling   local Syrian forces not only to beat back Islamic State fighters but to hold freed territory until a new central government, established in Damascus, can take over.

Since there is already an established central government in Damascus, it is safe to assume these regions carved out by US-backed militants will never be relinquished until Damascus falls. If successful, it will mean the Balkanization of Syria, and its cessation as a unified nation.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that this could readily escalate into a nuclear holocaust. I think the outcome depends in large part on the activists within the Empire can muster to oppose the Empire directors and the degree to which the latter are hopelessly addicted to power.

Secret TPP Text Unveiled: It’s Worse Than We Thought....

Click here to access article by Nick Florko and Valerie Holdford from Public Citizen.

Secret TPP Text Unveiled: It’s Worse Than We Thought, With Limits on Food Safety and Controversial Investor-State System Expanded, Rollback of Bush-Era Medicine Access and Environmental Terms

Because I didn't see anywhere in the article a link to the actual document, I finally accessed a government document which pretended to be the real thing, only it appeared like a sales pitch. I believe the actual document is around 6000 pages, so I think we will have to depend on scholars and lawyers like these authors to find out its actual contents, and the sections that really matter.

Failing the planet: UN climate talks from Kyoto to Paris

Click here to access article by Elaine Graham-Leigh from CounterFire (Britain). 

In the run-up to the UN Climate talks in Paris this December, it is clear that substantial, immediate cuts to global greenhouse gas emissions are needed if we are to keep global warming to less than 2C and avoid the most catastrophic climate effects. While the science is clear, the likelihood of such decisive action by the assembled governments is rather less so.

She goes on in detail to describe the failed results of each of these conferences, but she ends with this ambiguous conclusion:

One conclusion to be drawn from all this is that we cannot rely on our governments to come to a deal that will actually achieve the necessary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, but then we have already learnt that lesson from summits from Copenhagen on. This does not mean however that the talks are unimportant. What is often lost in the technical discussion and diplomatic wrangling around the climate summits is that climate change is not a technical problem, but a political one.

There is nothing in her article to indicate that a change in the economic system is imperative, or that it is the system of capitalism that make climate destabilization inevitable. So her final solution is for large demonstrations to convince our masters that they must enact political solutions within the system of capitalism. She, too, appears to be a liberal believer in the capitalist mantra that there is no alternative.

We’re the ‘Weeds’ for Monsanto Roundup Weed Killer

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook.

Engdahl cites a number of convincing reasons why we should be paranoid about the motivations of our masters.

What the scientists discovered should set alarm bells ringing around the world. Have you heard even so much as a jingle bell so far?

Is Charlie Hebdo a Western Hate-Machine?

Click here to access article by Ahmed Rajeev (Bangladesh) from Oriental Review. 

[Charlie Hebdo] is a Western tool to promote psychopathic hatred among different racial and cultural groups in the name of “freedom of expression” to serve geopolitical purposes of their masters. 

Left: Daesh: Russia’s aviation intensifies its bombardments. Right: The dangers of low-cost Russia. I should have taken Air Cocaine.

Washington prepares for World War III

Click here to access article by Patrick Martin from World Socialist Web Site. 

With regard to the possibility of WWIII, Martin reveals the rather stark contrast between the bellicose views of the military section of the US ruling class with the frayed social fabric of the US that would be necessary in fighting even a conventional war with Russia and/or China. 

Even though our masters in the ruling capitalist class express some worry about the latter, their addiction to power and profits prevents them from taking the problem very seriously, much less prevents them from any considerations about strengthening the social fabric. Thus, the social fabric will continue to fray while the delusions of our addicted rulers will only increase. This, of course, is a recipe for a disaster. It seems sometimes that only a religious faith in the revolutionary potential of American workers can provide comfort from the prospect of such a disaster, but how realistic is that when so many Americans are dumbed-down with corporate issued news reporting and distracted with mindless entertainment?

I think that the best we can hope for is that there are a sufficient number of ordinary Americans who will keep reminding their masters of their determined opposition through massive demonstrations, hacking into their computers and revealing their criminal secrets, writing about their lies and crimes in alternative media, a refusal to let them divide us by race/ethnicity, and in a thousand ways obstructing and/or, refusing to cooperate with, their policies and actions. 

This is probably necessary but not sufficient to save us from a nuclear holocaust. It will likely take more: at the very least, European governments breaking away from the Empire (for example, read this); and the best would be successful revolutionary movements in nations currently within the Empire (for example, read this). Such developments could seriously weaken the Empire to a point in which our masters come to their senses and realize that they cannot win even with their many weapons of mass destruction.

'Let's Bring In Our Pentagon Spokesman' - Bombing Syria

Click here to access article from Media Lens.

The editor of Media Lens aids us in identifying how "embedded" journalists report (illegal) war news to US citizens by comparing reports by one embedded journalist when he reported on US bombing raids in Syria with his reports of similar Russian raids. To introduce this article, the author reminds of a revealing slip by one Fox news announcer which really defines what embedded war reporting really is. 

TTIP: corporate power grab

Click here if you wish to directly access this series of short videos from Transnational Institute (TNI).

John Hilary, who is associated with War on Want in Britain, explains why we should be opposed to TTIP. 

ISDS is a mechanism engraved in (bilateral) investment treaties or an investment chapter of trade agreements which allows multinational corporations to sue governments in ad hoc tribunals. It is an extrajudicial system with special privileges and rights just for one class: Foreign investors, giving them more power relatively to citizens and governments.

Capitalist Democracy in Action

by cartoonist Jen Sorensen posted on Occasional Links & Commentary. 

Climate change: it’s going to take a revolution

Click here if you wish to directly access this 13:09m video by Suhail Ilyas posted on Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century (rs21) [Britain].

Climate change is real, it’s here and it’s going to get worse. We’ve known about it for decades, and real solutions exist. But the leaders of the world appear determined to do nothing about it. All the signs are that the international COP21 climate talks in Paris this December will produce an agreement to let us burn.

This new video, directed by Suhail Ilyas, looks at how the obstacles to solving the problem are intrinsic to our capitalist system. The growing strength of the climate movement around the world gives us great hope, but it’s going to take a revolution to make the world inhabitable for future generations. 

Arguments for revolution

Click here to access article by Jack Farmer from Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century (rs21) [Britain]. 

It seems to me that the workers of Europe will be the first to make cracks in the capitalist Empire's domination of the world. This appears to be case because they are suffering the worst under the Empire's austerity and neoliberal policies, and economic sanctions against Russia. Added to these frustrations are the Empire's destabilization actions against nearby countries which have resulted in never-ending wars, destruction of entire countries, the rise of fascist groups, and waves of immigrants fleeing from war torn areas. This article from a revolutionary oriented group in Britain is another indication that revolution is once again on the agenda of at least left-wing British workers.

I am especially impressed with Farmer's closing paragraphs:

Whatever happens in the coming months, we must build up the social movement that sparked Corbyn’s rise and without which he will be powerless. For a radical left that has spent decades in a defensive posture, there is a big danger that we position ourselves on the sidelines, smugly preaching the impossibility of change within the framework of parliament or capitalism. Instead, we’ve got to be shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone desperate for Labour to deliver change, while arguing that only the growing self-activity of ordinary people can win the change people yearn for. Just like a TV gameshow, you’ve got to be in it to win it.

Revolutionary socialists have a lot to teach – and a lot to learn. We draw inspiration and lessons from history, and especially from the experience of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, but if we allow ourselves to be satisfied with just an unchanging, desiccated “Leninism”, we’re dead. Marxism means learning: learning from each other’s mistakes and successes, learning from the past, learning how to intervene today to ignite people’s self-confidence. We never really graduate from the school of rebellion.

Putting this kind of politics into practice is far more difficult than politics-as-usual, leaving it to the professionals. But changing the world is never going to be easy.

The Anti-Empire Report #140: Are you confused by the Middle East? Here are some things you should know. (But you’ll probably still be confused.)

Click here to access article by William Blum. 

I completely endorse 99% of this article. The remaining 1% consists of this paragraph:

The candidacy of Bernie Sanders, a “democratic socialist”, for the US presidency has produced an unprecedented barrage of discussion in the American media about just what is this thing called “socialism”. Most of the discussion centers around the question of government ownership and control of the economy versus private ownership and control. This is, of course, a very old question; the meat and potatoes of the Cold War ideological competition.

I haven't seen any discussion about what socialism really is in American media--if by that he means mainstream media. The elaboration of the concept, if any, is limited to more generous welfare benefits, enhancement of labor protections, and more government spending on public projects. I have seen nothing about public ownership of the economy. This is blasphemy to a capitalist and anyone who affirms such a notion is immediately excommunicated.

As I've said before, Sanders' role for the ruling class is to make nice sounding words that will herd independent sheep back into the corral of the Democratic Party where they can once again be forced down the chute to the capitalist slaughterhouse. Obama performed this task last time, Gore the time before last, Bill Clinton prior to Gore, ad infinitum. Hillary can't do this now because she is too busy demonstrating that she is a tough "broad" for the more patriarchal right-wing voters in the US.

'Ed Snowden of Banking' Refuses to Appear in Swiss Trial

Click here if you wish to directly access this 4:51m interview and transcript with an independent investigative journalist about a banking whistleblower posted on Real News Network. 

He's a name you might not have heard of, but you should know: Herve Falciani. He is sometimes called the Ed Snowden of banking. Back in 2008 he committed the most significant theft of data in banking history. The former systems engineer at the Swiss subsidiary of HSBC downloaded details of more than 100,000 potential tax evaders and made the information available to the account holders' national tax agencies. He's been wanted by the Swiss government for seven years and counting.

Here to discuss his case is James Henry. James is a leading economist, attorney, and investigative journalist who has written extensively about global issues.

Russia Can Solve All Economic Problems Itself

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook.

Engdahl introduces an excellent idea to fund Russia's infrastructure after reviewing the recent history which transferred the control of Russian money from the state to an independent central bank at the instigation of Western ideologists. This independent bank poses a barrier to the construction of badly needed infrastructure development in Russia. His idea provides an end-run around this barrier.

There is a secret about economic infrastructure investment. Unlike various literal “windmill-building” government subsidized projects in today’s EU or USA, construction of necessary economic infrastructure such as high-speed rails–projects that make the arteries of the national and international economy flow faster and more efficiently–such infrastructure projects bring manifold economic gains to the overall economy. This is the long-forgotten “secret” of infrastructure investment discovered in America during the Great Depression when the government issued bonds to build the huge hydroelectric complex in the Government’s Tennessee Valley Authority and other massive infrastructure projects.

Various USA studies from the 1960’s, back when America still invested in its national infrastructure, found that spending on such vital economic infrastructure repays the state in new tax revenues approximately 11 dollars, or in this case rubles, for every dollar or ruble initially invested. That is the secret of well-conceived infrastructure spending.

The Sacrifice of Soldiers

by cartoonist Andy Singer posted on occasional links & commentary.

 

Washington Post Confirms: ISIS Supplied Via Turkey, a US Excuse to Seize Syria

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from Land Destroyer Report.

Using primary sources from the Empire's media, Cartalucci reveals the elaborate subterfuge used to support elements in Syria to overthrow the Assad government, and to justify illegal US/coalition attacks on Syrian territory.

Halitosis—a capitalist disease

as posted on Occasional Links & Commentary. 

Another apt title could be "How a corporation turned a floor cleaner into a breath freshener".

How Will We Reach an Ecological Civilization and Who Will Build It?

Click here to access article by Chris Williams from TruthOut. (a must-read article)

In this very thought provoking article Williams examines the many facets of the contradictions of capitalism for a sustainable planet, that is, a planet that can sustain human life. He also examines the many ways that capitalist directors can prolong their system in spite of its increasing deleterious effects. For humanity to save itself from extinction, he recognizes the imperative of a complete transformation of societies by posing and answering this question:

If we agree that we have entered a new epoch of geological time dominated by the activities of humans, through the actions and social relations engendered by capitalism, then what happens if we manage to overthrow capitalist social relations?

And then he argues what such a necessary revolutionary force and their new system would look like: 

Ultimately, it is vital that fighters for social emancipation, human freedom and ecological sanity recognize that capitalism represents the annihilation of nature and a functioning and diverse biosphere and, thus, human civilization. A system based on cooperation, genuine bottom-up democracy, long-term planning and production for need, not profit, i.e. ecosocialism, represents the reconciliation of humanity with nature.

The necessary gravedigger

Click here to access article by Kit Klarenberg from CounterFire (Britain).

Klarenberg offers a critical review of Canadian author Mike Lebowitz's new book entitled The Socialist Imperative.

Marxist theorists have always seen the working class as "the necessary gravedigger" of capitalism, and in this review Klarenberg reports that Lebowitz sees this necessity more imperative than ever before:

...as modern capitalism increasingly threatens not only the stability of the environment, but our very species survival, he considers it a more morally crucial objective than ever. In attempting to establish a framework for socialist victory in the twenty-first century, he assesses why previous efforts were unsuccessful, how capitalism came to be embraced – or, at least, tolerated – by the people who would benefit most from a more equitable configuration of society, and advances a modernised vision of collectivist organisation.  

'Absolute Crap' But Brilliant: Corporate America's Plan to 'Misbehave Without Reproach

Click here to access article by Jon Queally from Common Dreams. 

It appears that our corporate-connected masters are now inserting a clause into consumer contracts to circumvent laws and due process by shunting consumer disputes to more friendly "arbitration panels" instead of courts of law. Notice the similarity here with the Investor-State Dispute Settlement in relation to international trade treaties which places corporations on an equal plane with nation-states and disputes are settled in a business-friendly arbitration tribunal.

An independent investigation by journalists featured in the New York Times on Sunday offers an in-depth look at the way American corporations have used the inclusion of "arbitration clauses" within consumer contracts to strategically circumvent judicial review of their behavior and immunize themselves from class action lawsuits –"realistically the only tool citizens have to fight illegal or deceitful business practices." 

US Threatens UK over Brexit Vote

Click here to access article by "Don Quijones" from Wolf Street. 

A referendum scheduled in 2017 in Britain to determine whether they stay in the European Union has provoked a warning from the Empire's trade czar, Michael Froman. This ex-patriot British blogger, who lives in Spain most of the time, sees this as a threat to the Empire's hegemony over Europe. 

...the business and political establishment in Brussels, London, and now Washington will stop at nothing to make sure that when the big day comes, the British people, like the Irish before them (second time around, of course), vote the right way.

This article provides an excellent followup to another article recently posted by this author entitled "The CIA Connection: How US Spy Chiefs Co-Financed European Federalists".

Introducing Speaker Ryan

by cartoonist Gregory Crawford posted on World News Trust. 

I think the photo is of Ayn Rand who has had much influence among fascist members of the US ruling class.

America's Unofficial Religion - The War on an Idea

The Real News produced the video below which provides us within 29:10m an excellent history of the war that US capitalists have waged in all their ideological institutions against anyone arguing the notion of public ownership and control of the economy. At the same time they have essentially elevated the economic system of capitalism to that of a religion. Those who question or dissent from this religion are subject to many forms of "excommunication" such as ridicule, ostracism, unemployment, poverty, and killing if necessary.

(On a personal note, as an activist in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s and 70s, I knew of Richard Becker, a leader of a leftist party, who spoke at many rallies. Brian Becker, who recounts a lot of socialist history in the video, looks astonishingly identical to him.)

I disagree with Brian Becker with respect to his portrayal of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Party's campaign. Our ruling class is simply using Sanders to continue their re-definition of "socialism" as "social democracy" (capitalism with significant welfare and public spending programs)--which they can barely tolerate--in order to divert people's attention away from public ownership and control of the economy. In the context of electoral campaigns they often do this to bring unwitting dissenters and activists, who have difficulty with harsh austerity policies, back into supporting the Democratic Party and its candidates. 

Our ruling capitalist directors have so successfully managed to conflate socialism with the nice sounding label of "social democracy" that many Americans today confuse social democracy with socialism. Historically I think this began in the 1930s when Norman Thomas was a perennial candidate of the Socialist Party of America which by the 1930s, due to issues related to the Soviet revolution of 1917, had become largely transformed from a radical anti-capitalist party to a social democratic type of party. Thomas collaborated with, and supported, FDR's attempts to introduce a variety of social welfare and public spending programs. 

Rapidly Warming Waters Have Thwarted Efforts to Save the Cod

Click here to access article by Phil McKenna from Inside Climate News.

This report cites another instance of environmental degradation caused by the human invention of capitalism which drives a few individuals (capitalists) to accumulate more wealth and power for themselves while degrading our home--planet Earth. I think if we allow these childish simple-minded people, who unfortunately are our housemates, to keep damaging our Earth-home, nature acting much like a landlord will simply evict all of us via increasingly extreme weather events such as Hurricane Patricia and the profound destabilization of our climate in general. By allowing these immature people to have their way, we will all become homeless (extinct).

The number of Atlantic cod in the Gulf of Maine has hit an all-time low in recent years despite strong fishing regulations, and scientists now attribute it to rapidly rising water temperatures, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science.

Sea surface temperatures have increased in the Gulf of Maine faster than almost anywhere else in the world, causing the cold-water species that had already been decimated by centuries of overfishing to reach the verge of collapse.

The CIA Connection: How US Spy Chiefs Co-Financed European Federalists

Click here to access a very revealing article discovered by "Don Quijones" of Raging Bull-Shit.

It appears that the project of a European Union was largely a secret project promoted by powerful actors in the US and carried out through offices connected with the CIA. This blogger discovered an online report from 2000 written by a top financial analyst, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, which provides declassified evidence for this revelation. 

It is now clear that empire builders among the US ruling class following WWII saw the convenience of organized European governing bodies for US post-war domination of Europe. This project together with the Gladio program (also see this for more details), which was designed to contain post-WWII dissent from capitalist rule, managed to integrate most of Europe into a US-led Empire we see today, and included with the package, an army called NATO. 

I've been wondering: maybe the Third Reich took control of the world after all--only it flies a US flag instead of a Nazi flag.

Israel partisans bully campuses – Blum & Feinstein threaten pro-Palestinian students

Click here to access article by Philip Giraldi from The Council for the National Interest.

The ruling capitalist class's interest in supporting fortress Israel in the Mideast together with fascist oriented American Jews are combining to harass pro-Palestinian students on many campuses. This denial of free speech, especially on campuses, must not be tolerated. Giraldi offers some sound advice in the last paragraph to deal with this growing problem.

China Turns Tables on US-Backed Agitators

Click here to access article by Ulson Gunnar from New Eastern Outlook.


Nations are beginning to be successful in coping with the Empire's use of NGOs to ostensibly promote human rights while their real agenda is sowing chaos and destabilization of countries. Read the article to find out how China is doing this.

Why Do We Have Wars, Mummy?

The following political graphic was borrowed from Raging Bull-Shit.

One point which is not made clear in this graphic is that people who "win" in a capitalist system are psychopathic/sociopathic almost by definition. This is because capitalism divides societies into basically two segments: "owners" and workers, and their interests are diametrically opposed. The owners and controllers of our money and our economy (capitalists) are motivated strictly by their own selfish interests, and basically these interests consist of more wealth and power which they obtain by essentially renting workers to create wealth. Ownership of the media and rigorous control over all information is necessary to insure that workers are misinformed about wars, ignorant of how capitalism really works, and show up each day to create more wealth and power for the capitalist elite. Even worse, they use pro-war propaganda to motivate workers to join their armies and kill others in order so that they can steal and control other nations' workers and resources.

Offshoring the Economy: Why the US is on the Road to the Third World

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from CounterPunch. 

Roberts belongs to a circle composed of a large number of critics who are best identified as national capitalists. The members of this group, like Protestants, belong to a number of sub-denominations: liberals, social-democrats (Richard Wolf, Naomi Klein, and Bernie Sanders), traditional conservatives (PC Roberts, Pat Buchanan, and Ron Paul), and many independent critics of neoliberal capitalism as manifested today in the US Empire. They all share in their dislike for what capitalism has become in the 21st century and want to return to nationalist capitalism that came to rule the world in the 20th century. 

Thus Roberts in this essay doesn't seem to understand that powerful capitalists in the Empire have changed the form of capitalism forever to a globalist form known as neoliberalism under their command. The latter, to secure and advance their interests for every greater wealth and power, are at war with any independent nations who refuse to submit to their command and their application of neoliberalism. This new globalized capitalism is creating ever greater concentrations of wealth and power for ever fewer trans-national capitalists while also creating greater numbers of poor and powerless people in the areas of the world under their command. Borders are being breached for their commercial operations and their movement while those for the control of workers and ordinary people are being erected everywhere in the Empire. 

Roberts, like many other critics, seems to think that we can revert to a nationally based capitalism, and they are upset at the direction it is going. Using the provisions of  the Investor-State Dispute Settlement clauses of the new trade treaties (TTIP, TPP, & TISA), Empire capitalists have been planning in secret negotiations to subordinate governments of individual nations to the power of transnational capitalist legal tribunals. 

With his narrow focus on the US, Roberts seems oblivious to the growing world problem: increasing numbers of poor and powerless people everywhere in the world controlled by shrinking numbers of powerful and wealthy trans-national capitalists. In other words, the First World and the Third World will exist everywhere in the world. Instead, with his old-fashioned nationalist view, he narrowly focuses on the effects here in the US. He apparently wants, and believes is possible, a return to nationally based capitalism. He, like many other critics, simply does not understand that the concentration of wealth and power is an inevitable result of capitalist dynamics, and Empire capitalists are not going to allow national borders to stand in their way. 

Only politically conscious workers can prevent this from happening, and prevent the many anti-social effects of capitalism by replacing the system with one that serves all the people everywhere.

Neocon House Speaker Paul Ryan. Gutting Social Programs, More Spending for Wars

Click here to access article by Stephen Lendman from Global Research.

Ryan’s ascendency lurches Washington further to the right. His neocon credentials are scary. He wants more spending for wars and militarism, less for social programs. ....

He rants about ‘keeping America strong,” supports its heavy intervention hand anywhere it wishes, serving US interests at the expense of all others.

Author Jeff J. Brown interviewed by Dan Yaseen on KFCF FM88.1, Fresno, California

Click here to access this nearly 30 minute interview with Brown, an American who lives and works in China and offers Chinese views and his own on various issues.

Join Jeff and Dan on KFCF FM88.1 in Fresno, California, for an insightful and informative conversation about China, Russia, the United States and the rise of the Anti-West Alliance, to do battle against Western empire and colonialism. It is happening before our very eyes, but you would never know it in the West’s mainstream media. This interview will provide you with history changing news events that are either buried or completely distorted behind the Great Western Firewall.

U.S. Democracy Recalled

by cartoonist Jen Sorensen from her website. 

This illustrates how most people in the US have been thoroughly indoctrinated in beliefs about the existence of "democracy" in the US. Here they sense that it is flawed, but they fail to realize how fake it actually is, and has always been--except to a lesser degree.

Nature, Capitalism, Crisis

Click here to access a 55 minute interview conducted by Sasha Lilley of KPFA, a listener sponsored radio station in Berkeley, CA, with an environmental economist and radical scholar Jason Moore.

Humans seem to be at war with nature -- epitomized by the system of capitalism, which plunders as it grows. But what if we understood the realm of Nature as not separate from the human realm of Society? Radical scholar Jason Moore suggests that we need to embed our critique of capitalism within the web of life on earth – so as best to oppose it.

Moore also goes on to develop the thesis that we must examine how the development of capitalism plays an integral role in organizing and altering nature on our planet Earth, and is now approaching nature's limits and causing all kinds of crises. 

Trident Juncture and the No To NATO Movement

Click here to access article by Christopher Black from New Eastern Outlook.

The very notable international human rights attorney draws our attention to the ongoing aggressive military events perpetrated by Empire directors very near Russia's borders. This reportage is almost completely missing from mainstream news sources, particularly from TV news programs. Instead the latter news reports, which most ordinary Americans follow for news of the world, are filled with trivia, entertainment, celebrities, scandals, election debates among candidates sponsored by the ruling class, and with a little anti-Russian and anti-Chinese slanted coverage thrown in. This type of corporate media coverage is a deliberate strategy designed by ruling capitalist class directors to keep ordinary people distracted and dumbed-down as to the directors' war crimes, preparations, and provocations that are carried out under the banners of the US and NATO.

Black in this article attempts to fill us in on an important missing segment: a major military exercise now going on in the Baltic states under NATO's direction. He carefully examines the texts and subtexts of official reports about this exercise and finds that it is a very aggressive, provocative project aimed like a dagger at Russia.

The NATO war machine is now engaged in its biggest military exercises since the end of the Cold War. Exercise Trident Juncture began on September 28 and continues through to November 6 with exercises taking place in all NATO countries but with major field operations taking place in Portugal, Spain and Italy. The exercises, involving 35,000 personnel, over 200 aircraft and 50 warships is taking place as the confrontation between the United States of American and its dependencies in the NATO war alliance on the one hand and Russia and its allies on the other continues to develop in a very alarming way on two fronts, Syria and Ukraine.

Debtors’ prisons fill up in deep South

Click here to access article by Minnie Bruce Pratt from Workers World.

Jailing someone for debt who is too poor to pay is a civil rights violation under the 1966 U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It is also illegal under the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Bearden vs. Georgia.

But though debtor’s prisons are not allowed de jure — by law — they are on the rise de facto.

Soaring heat and humidity pose deadly threat

Click here to access article by Tim Radford from Climate News Network. 

New research indicates that the thermometer may climb to what meteorologists call a “wet bulb temperature” of 35°C [95°F] − the temperature of human skin. At this point, people in the region would be unable to keep cool, and after prolonged exposure, even young, healthy, fit people could die.

There is no record that such temperatures have been reached anywhere in the world in human history. But the scientific report in Nature Climate Change suggests that under the “business as usual scenario” − whereby no steps are taken to address climate change, and the expanding the use of coal, oil and natural gas dumps ever greater quantities carbon dioxide in the atmosphere − then such conditions could occur once every decade or so before 2100.

TTIP: Might is Right

The 49:16 video via YouTube embedded below was produced by an independent Dutch media organization called VPRO. It illustrates the concrete realities of the clause inserted in all the new neoliberal trade treaties called Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) by focusing on the effects witnessed in Canada under the NAFTA agreement. As the introduction to this video states:

In order to understand the potential consequences of this, VPRO Backlight traveled to Canada, which became one of the most sued countries in the world after it entered into a trade agreement with the US. American companies now summon the Canadian government to appear before an arbitration tribunal if they feel that Canadian rules aren't in compliance with the free trade agreement Nafta. Despite democratic decisions against fracking under Canada's most important river, the Saint Lawrence, the Canadian government was sued for millions of dollars by the oil and shale gas company Lone Pine.

Work harder to be born into the right family

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from his blog Systemic Disorder.

Dolack starts out with statistics showing the growing disparities of income and some references to the advantage of being born into wealthy families. But soon he makes a much more original contribution to this phenomenon of inequality: he supplies solid data indicating that one's nation of birth is even a more powerful factor separating the rich from the poor in the world. To put it another way, the rich take even greater advantage of the power and wealth of already rich and power nations into which they are born than they do using the advantages of family wealth. Thus, the title could have been more aptly stated as "Work harder to be born into the right nation as well as the right family".

This, of course, reflects the factor of imperialism in today's world as a driving force to concentrate wealth in fewer hands and creating poverty in ever increasing numbers of the world's poor. In the 21st century we see the effects of this phenomenon on dramatic display with the operations of the US-led Empire and its hyper aggressive military and economic policies to gain control over populations, markets, cheap labor, and resources throughout many areas of the world.

Indonesians should be able to talk about 1965 massacres without fear of censorship

Click here to access article by Vannessa Hearman, Lecturer in Indonesian Studies, University of Sydney, from The Conversation.

This article written by an academic in Australia and published in an online journal supported by capitalist funding sources illustrates how many people are mis-educated and indoctrinated to serve capitalist propaganda interests. In the article Hearman exposes her complete naïveté with regard to one of history's most horrendous crimes against humanity. There has been a concerted effort since this 1965 event to cover it up by Western academic institutions and media because it exposes the roles of US and British subversive forces to extend their control over the newly independent country of Indonesia following WWII. 

If you are not informed about this historic crime and the Empire's involvement in it, I direct your attention to some brief articles here, here, and here, or a longer series of three published in Ramparts Magazine in 1970 accessed here, here, and here.

Climate changes can kick in below 2°C limit

Click here to access article by Tim Radford from Uncommon Thought Journal.

Weather is what happens, climate is what people grow to expect from the weather. So climate change, driven by global warming as a consequence of rising carbon dioxide levels, in response to more than a century of fossil fuel combustion, could be – for many people – gradual, imperceptible and difficult to identify immediately.

But Sybren Drijfhout, of the University of Southampton in the UK and his collaborators in France, the Netherlands and Germany, are not so sure.

The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government

Click here to access a review of Talbot's new book by Edward Curtin from Global Research (based in Canada).

His ideological obsession in countering the Soviet Union in the Cold War knew no bounds. Talbot reports that private citizen Dulles funded espionage activities with treasure looted from Jewish families; that he set up, together with Frank Wisner and others, his own espionage unit deep within the State Department – the Office of Policy Coordination; that he was instrumental in the rise of Richard Nixon to political prominence. Throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s he was hard at work constructing the infrastructure of the CIA and a powerful secret government that would outlast him.

Once he finagled his way into the position of CIA Director under Eisenhower, “the CIA would become avast kingdom, the most powerful and least supervised agency in government …. More in keeping with an expanding empire than with a vibrant democracy.”

Unfortunately Curtin emphasizes Dulles's antisemitism in the first half of this review and in the last half provides a rather narrow focus on the machinations and well-grounded suspicions of Dulles that Talbot revealed in his book. Missing from Curtin's review is a larger picture of how Dulles represented dark fascist forces in the US which, having failed with a government coup in 1933 (read Jules Archer's The Plot to Seize the White House), buried themselves under the label of isolationism to impede any efforts by the Roosevelt administration to counter the growing forces of fascist capitalism that overran Europe. 

After WWII they then used the naive President Truman, whose main claim to success was as an operator of a department store in Missouri, to ensconce themselves in a new secret organization that soon became the CIA. This is where Talbot's exposé comes in to tell the story of the gradual takeover of our government by these authoritarian capitalists, while Curtin in this review fails to provide the more important larger history by focusing on "evil-doers" such as Dulles. This constrained focus is necessary in order to avoid issues of fascism and the fake democracy-themed distractions we now see played out over our TV sets. 

Perhaps I'm being a bit unfair. So, read the review and the book to see what you think. Also, check out this recent post regarding the book, its author, and my commentary.

In Iceland bankers are not Holy Cows and that is good for the country

Click here to access article by Asad Zaman from Real-World Economics Review Blog.

Occasionally one finds in small countries, where capitalist elites haven't yet taken full control of these countries, unusual patterns of genuine accountability of leaders to their societies at large. Iceland appears to be one such example.

In a story not reported on at all by any Western mainstream media source, Iceland just sentenced another five high level bankers to prison for directly contributing to the collapse of the country’s economy in 2008.

This brings the total to 26 bankers now behind bars in Iceland, with most being CEOs of large financial institutions, rather than low level traders.

Most of those jailed will serve terms of two to five years, according to a report by Iceland Magazine, which notes that three executives at Landsbankinn and two at Kaupþing, along with one prominent investor, have been prosecuted.

"One very simple, but radical, idea: to democratise Europe." An interview with Yanis Varoufakis

Click here to access this interview from Open Democracy (based in Britain but European in outlook). 

The interview with the former Greek leader as well as the online source, Open Democracy, encapsulates what I believe is representing a stunted version of "radical" thought often found in online media today. This radical thought is essentially a product of the tenuous status of middle class people in an advanced capitalist world in which the need for middle class people is diminishing because of the increasing sophistication of technological innovations all of which were created by workers but have become "owned" and controlled by capitalists. 

Efficiency of production has always been a driving force among capitalists in order to achieve greater profits and power. We have now arrived at such advanced technologies that the need for managers, miscellaneous professional staffs, government bureaucrats, etc have been considerably reduced. The middle class is threatened by this, and thus we have many people like Varoufakis who are reacting to this stress by making various proposals dressed up in "democratic" clothing to try to cope with this déclassé threat. I think that this is the case with Varoufakis in spite of one line, a paraphrase of lines from past genuine revolutionaries, thrown into the interview by him to give his views a veneer of radical respectability:

There are ways you can imagine intervening immediately in the European crisis today to stabilise European capitalism in order to be able to begin discussing political projects for democratising it. It is either that or barbarism. [my emphasis]

I argue this because of many other statements he made in the interview that betrays a capitalist perspective such as this:

A state emerges as a result of the political need for a mechanism, a collective action mechanism, that ameliorates class conflict and group conflict.

This is a decidedly a capitalist perspective on the role of a state. It only acts as a mediator of intra-capitalist class conflicts. The capitalist state functions to constrain and contain opposition from workers and to co-opt essential middle-class workers by giving them various perks, privileges, and higher pay. A state is a creature created by capitalists who took over the control of territories under the former ruling class consisting of monarchs and aristocracies who gained control through the use of violence.

And this:

By definition, the state, even if it is not democratic, as in China for instance, nevertheless is a purely political process for the purpose of stabilising social conflicts.

This statement implies that Europe has enjoyed authentic democracy. And, the state does not function to stabilize social conflicts. It functions to contain it for the benefit of the ruling capitalist class.

You will see other examples of a capitalist perspective if you peruse other articles on Open Democracy's website. 

This is not a democracy: Behind the Deep State that Obama, Hillary or Trump couldn’t control

Click here to access article by Patrick L. Smith from Salon.

There are two ways to consider the White House’s announcement last week that, no, American troops will no longer withdraw from Afghanistan as previously planned. You can look back over President Obama’s record in such matters or you can face forward and think about what this decision means, or implies, or suggests —or maybe all three—about the next president’s conduct of foreign policy.

I do not like what I see in either direction. What anyone who looks carefully and consciously can discern in Obama’s seven years in office are limits. These are imposed in part by inherited circumstances, but let us set these aside for now, appalling as they are. My concern is with the limits imposed by the entrenched power of our permanent government, otherwise known as the “deep state.”

I've only had an opportunity to scan this article, but it appears to offer at least a mild recognition that a "deep state" is really in control over all important decisions, particularly with regard to foreign policies, affecting our nation. I completely agree with the following:

I put this question to David Talbot in a telephone exchange Tuesday. Talbot (who founded Salon 20 years ago) has just published “The Devil’s Chessboard,” an account of the deep state focused on the crucial role of Allen Dulles as it emerged in the 1950s. Dulles directed the CIA from 1953 until President Kennedy fired him in 1961. It is Talbot’s contention that elements of the deep state, probably including Dulles, were responsible for Kennedy’s assassination two years later.

“Presidents have to be thoroughly vetted before getting to the White House,” Talbot replied. “Kennedy was probably the last president not thoroughly approved by the deep state."

The Importance of the Official 9/11 Myth

Click here to access article by Kevin Ryan from blog Dig Within.

People sometimes wonder why is it important to investigate the alleged hijackers and others officially accused of committing the 9/11 crimes. After all, the accused 19 hijackers could not have accomplished most of what happened. The answer is that the official accounts are important because they are part of the crimes. Identifying and examining the people who created the official 9/11 myth helps to reveal the ones who were responsible overall.

The people who actually committed the crimes of September 11th didn’t intend to just hijack planes and take down the buildings—they intended to blame others.

Genies and Genocide: Syria, Israel, Russia and Much Oil

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook.

The geopolitical stakes in the Middle East have just gotten higher by an order of magnitude. Take a little-known Newark, New Jersey oil company, the contested Golan Heights between Syria and Israel, add a reported major oil discovery there just as Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria goes into high gear, shake it vigorously and we have a potential detonator for World War III.

TTIP is an Geoeconomic Tool against Russia

Click here to access article by Steven MacMillan from New Eastern Outlook. 

(Note: This article really consists of two essays with the headline emphasizing the first. I regard the second essay by the above title as far more important. You will need to scroll down a bit to find it.)

MacMillan finds evidence that TTIP, one of the latest secret trade pacts (includes also TPP & TISA), is being crafted not only to promote more corporate dominance over the governments of the Empire, but is strategically directed against Russia which insists upon independence from the Empire. The directors of the latter simply cannot tolerate such independence. Like all fascist forms of capitalist regimes they can only accept subservience . I think a similar argument can be made for TPP with regard to China.

Hillary Clinton: We Lied. The Aim Of Our War On Libya Was Regime Change

Click here to access article by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama.

Sometimes employees of the Empire's directorate forget about the latter's propaganda and inadvertently tell the truth. Not to worry--no corporate media will take notice of this slip-up and broadcast it. What is interesting is that a person well connected to the Council on Foreign Relations, a major Empire think tank, noticed her slip-up. 

Bernhard concludes by asking this question:

If there are any competent opponents to her candidacy for president they should pick up on this and use it to destroy her: "You want a president that is lying to you about going to war?

Well, I think they are all demonstrating competence by knowing when to keep their mouths shut in order to preserve the lies of the Empire. On the other hand, her Empire handlers might be concerned about her slip-ups, but then they know that everyone of influence will cover for her.

Flannery's climate 'Third Way' well intended, but dodges the problem

Click here to access article by Phil Shannon from Green Left Weekly.

Shannon reviews a recently published book by Tim Flannery in which the author describes several promising techno-fixes to the excessive pumping of carbon into the atmosphere and oceans by capitalist engines of production for profit. He concludes his review with these statements:

By not scaring the sacrosanct GDP horses, by not challenging the capitalist god of economic growth, Flannery obscures the link between global warming and the capitalist economic system that has given rise to it. ....

Flannery's “Third Way” is the grand, and risky, illusion of geo-engineering, albeit shorn of its dangerously wilder fantasies, that will keep capitalism humming all the way up to environmental Armageddon. 

The Saker interviews Cynthia McKinney

Click here to access this very fascinating interview from "The Saker's" website A bird's eye view of the Vineyard. 

I have not had time before my deadline to read this entire interview, but it appears so very rich in insights about recent American history. She warns us:

Despite all of the negative things that have happened to me, I still believe that the people in the U.S. can create positive transformational change for themselves that will also be good for the rest of the world.  What I don’t know is if they will seize the opportunity to do so, while it is still possible.  Sharpening the technologies of death and applying them at home as well as abroad shapes the tenor of the times.  I fear that the democratic space for such positive change is drastically and rapidly closing.

F*** a Wage, Take Over the Business: A How-To with Economist Richard Wolff

Click here to access an interview conducted by Andrew Smolski with Richard Wolff posted on CounterPunch. 

I've never been much of a fan of Wolff, and the views he expresses about Marxism doesn't change my mind very much. They are essentially "Marxism 101", so rudimentary that they gloss over so much of the development of capitalism. It is a primitive populist version designed to appeal to people with little education. Thus, when applied to the real contemporary world, this conceptualization will run into all kinds of problems. 

His views would be much more relevant to capitalism if he were writing in the 1930s. Wolff writes like an historian who loves actors who played major roles on the stage of world history and as he attempts to bask in their glory. Hence he writes frequently about someone (Marx) in the 19th century who first noticed and understood capitalism as it existed in all its stark contradictions at that time. As a student of the development of capitalism, this is a very good place to start to understand it; but it is not adequate to understand capitalism as it functions in today's world. Moreover, he grossly distorts Marxism by arguing that a political system can be separated from an economic system while implying that what we have today is a real democratic political system. Look at these sample paragraph to see what I am referring to:

Because in our system, the majority of the people prevail in the political arena. The majority of votes, roughly speaking, wins! That creates the following terrifying danger for the people at top. Sooner or later people are going to understand in our system that the damage you suffer in the capitalist economy can be offset or reversed if you use your majority in the political system. You can use the fact that the mass of workers, utterly disenfranchised economically, can use politics to undue the effects.

.... We need system change! .... And one way to do that, the way I would prefer, is to overcome the contradiction by finally making the economic system democratic so it isn’t at odds with a political system that is at least trying to be democratic. 

They Profit, We Die: The Perils of Chemical-Intensive Agriculture

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter from CounterPunch.

Our food system is in big trouble. It’s in big trouble because the global agritech/agribusiness sector is poisoning it, us and the environment with its pesticides, herbicides, GMOs and various other chemical inputs. ....

This was only made possible and continues to be made possible because of lavish funds, slick PR, compliant politicians and scientists and the undermining and capture of regulatory and policy decision-making bodies that supposedly serve the public interest.

They Profit, We Die: Toxic Agriculture And The Poisoning Of Soils, Human Health And The Environment

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter from East by Northwest. (Note: I am re-posting this article, which I originally posted on the 21st, because of recent comments added by Todhunter and this blogger which adds considerable interest to the issue of capitalism and writing about all the issues related to the system. Please feel free to join in.)

Once again Todhunter shows how the profit gatherers will use any means, even chemically infested foods, to reap their profits and power. Unfortunately, he like many other critics, who almost daily attack the inevitable effects caused by capitalist activities, fail to target the system which not only permits such anti-social practices, but actually promotes them. It's as if these critics also believed the chief propagandists of the capitalist class, people like Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama, and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that development of human societies has achieved it final perfect expression in Western capitalist societies and will become the model for all others to follow after the older cultures and religions succumb to the West's influence. The West, of course, embodies "democracy", human rights, material abundance, and all other virtues. Although they don't buy into the virtuous West, they seem to have succumbed to the theme that "there is no alternative".

I'm referring to such astute critics as Eric Draitser, Tony Cartalucci, F. William Engdahl, Pepe Escobar, and Colin Todhunter (I'm not sure about Michael Hudson) who fail to examine the underlying dynamics of capitalism which produce the war crimes and corporate crimes they critique in their writings. Instead they limit their criticisms to what are only symptoms of the ongoing activities of this antisocial, class based system. They are very much like some imaginary medical practitioners who limit their treatment of cancer by attacking painful symptoms with mere painkillers. About the only prescription they advocate to treat the awful things that are happening in today's world is a "multipolar (capitalist) world". 

Todhunter doesn't even do that. He apparently feels that he can shout about the evils of corporate methods of farming and producing food and be heard over the noise produced by the huge megaphones of corporate controlled media in order to influence people to vote for suitable governors in elections controlled by capitalists.

I really dislike criticizing people like the above named critics, all of whose articles I love reading and posting. But the discussion simply must move beyond their critiques of symptoms to the underlying cause of so much of the misery suffered by humanity. Otherwise I think it is inevitable that humans will disappear from the Earth either from catastrophic nuclear wars or climate destabilization.

Welcome to a New Planet: Climate Change “Tipping Points” and the Fate of the Earth

Click here to access article by Michael T. Klare from TomDispatch. (Note: Should you wish to skip Engelhardt's introduction, you will need to scroll down to the article.)

Not so long ago, it was science fiction. Now, it’s hard science -- and that should frighten us all. The latest reports from the prestigious and sober Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) make increasingly hair-raising reading, suggesting that the planet is approaching possible moments of irreversible damage in a fashion and at a speed that had not been anticipated.

Scientists have long worried that climate change will not continue to advance in a “linear” fashion, with the planet getting a little bit hotter most years.  Instead, they fear, humanity could someday experience “non-linear” climate shifts (also known as “singularities” or “tipping points”) after which there would be sudden and irreversible change of a catastrophic nature.

The only problem is...we humans won't be around to "welcome" this new planet. The natural forces which govern our universe will disappear us humans because we have been just another species that failed to adapt by living in harmony with the natural forces. Instead we worshiped the power and wealth of a tiny group of humans called capitalists who led us off the cliffs of never-ending wars and climate destabilization.